The agreements, announced this month at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, mark Intel's latest effort to enter the burgeoning -- and lucrative -- smartphone market, where most devices currently feature chips designed by ARM Holdings.

Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group, said that while Intel still sells hundreds of million of chips a year, ARM partners like Nvidia, Samsung, Texas Instruments and Qualcomm are shipping billions of "increasingly sophisticated devices" that are built with ARM chips.

Under the agreements, Lenovo and Motorola will release smartphones based on Intel's upcoming Atom Z2460 chip, code-named Medfield, later this year, said Intel CEO Paul Otellini in a CES keynote speech.

But to ensure success against a rival whose share of the smartphone processor market is close to 100%, the Intel-based phones will need application developers, carrier support and positive reviews from independent analysts, Moorhead added.